


Puzzles

by SimplexityJane



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Coming Out, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-06
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 15:38:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1072181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimplexityJane/pseuds/SimplexityJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Bucky kissed Steve. One time Steve confessed his love. </p><p>Or:</p><p>It doesn’t work very well. It’s really weird, like you’re puzzle pieces and you don’t fit—maybe it’ll be better with a girl, you think, and Steve grumbles, hold still jerk, and you laugh and he accidentally bites your lip. </p><p>Oh, you think. The puckering thing, that was what was weird.</p><p>You’re both red faced and avoiding each other after that, but it only works for about a day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Puzzles

I

You first kiss him in Brooklyn, in 1926. He’s eight, you’re almost seven, and he’s dying. He’s making these _awful_ noises, and the nuns are crossing themselves, and you watch him, helpless. Then an older boy comes up behind him, presses his hands to his ribs, and pushes.

Whatever it was lands on the ground. Later that night, Steve breathing next to you, you turn to him. You sound like a little squeaky toy, by the way. You don’t know that yet.

“Don’t you ever do that again,” you say, and you hug him, kiss his cheek. It’s what Mommy used to do for you, when you’d done something that wasn’t stupid but was awful anyway. He nods, eyes wide, and you fall asleep turned toward each other like that.

II

The next time you kiss him, you’re thirteen and hiding from Sister Horatio and Sister Thomas. He’s fourteen but you’re the same size, you’re growing like a weed and girls keep staring at you. It’s for practice, because you can’t think of kissing anyone unless you’ve kissed him first, because he’s _Steve_ and the two of you are all the family you’ll ever need.

“Okay,” he says, and you try to just, well, pucker.

It doesn’t work very well. It’s really weird, like you’re puzzle pieces and you don’t fit—maybe it’ll be better with a girl, you think, and Steve grumbles, _hold still jerk_ , and you laugh and he accidentally bites your lip.

 _Oh_ , you think. The puckering thing, _that_ was what was weird.

You’re both red faced and avoiding each other after that, but it only works for about a day.

III

The next time it’s 1938, and he just turned twenty. You’ve been in love with him for a decade, admitted it to yourself for a year, and you wish _he_ could see him the way you do. More, you wish other people did, because that sort of light, the kind that doesn't get smashed? It's precious.

He’s flushed with alcohol from just one beer, grinning up at you on your ratty couch in this ratty apartment, and you feel the two beers you’ve had when you kiss him.

When he doesn’t kiss you back, you leave. You go to a bar, one he doesn’t know you know about (well, probably after tonight he'll know, you think bitterly, punching a wall), and you find someone who won’t kiss you but who’ll want you anyway.

When you come back on July fifth, he stares at you.

“I’m sorry,” you say.

“Don’t be.” He doesn’t say anything else.

IV

He’s twenty-two and shitfaced, and you’re holding him up. He pushes at your chest feebly, until he’s standing on his own two feet.

“C’mere, jerk,” he says, and you lean forward, breathing in the rancid alcohol on his breath. “I like you,” he says, almost into your mouth.

“You’re drunk,” you say, and lift him onto your shoulder. He’s passed out by the time you get back to the apartment, and you brush his hair back from his face. You kiss him on the forehead like he’s a kid, and it’s sweaty and unpleasant. You don’t care.

V

He saves you, and you save him. You pull him up onto the floor, his fingers digging bruises into your arms that are gonna heal in an hour, and he grins at you. Grins _down_ at you, and you think, _fuck it, this_ has _to be a dream_ , and grab him by his neck. He tastes like sweat and gunpowder, and he kisses you back.

It has to be a dream, but the building is coming down around you and you have to get out of here.

“Later,” he says.

Later doesn’t come. Not for you.

i.

It’s 2013, and you read articles on every sort of history that excludes the Cold War. You were there for that, after all.

You learn about DADT and the repeal, spitting out, “Fucking _finally_ ,” to your therapist in an effort to come out _and_ drive the grandfatherly gentleman away. He chuckles, nodding, and asks you how, as a bisexual (“Not gay,” you correct him.) man in the military, you adapted to being in the spotlight. He makes it out like you’re over dependent on Steve, and even though he’s probably right you just glare at him, silent.

He lets you go and doesn’t ask if you were in love with Captain America.

Steve doesn’t stay away during your history binge, focusing on cultural politics since he’s already aware of what the US has done since he’s been under the ice. He hates it, you can tell, was always optimistic and idealistic and everything a mouthy kid in Brooklyn didn’t need to be.

He doesn’t bluster in public anymore, even when people ask him his opinion on controversial topics. Like the repeal, and gay marriage.

“Something that I’ve noticed—a trend, I guess—is that people in 2013 think that civil rights is a straight line,” he says after a moment. “I was an orphan, but before that my parents were immigrants. We weren’t conservative by any measure, though we were Catholic.”

“But how do you feel about these specific issues?” the reporter, a blonde woman you recognize from Stark Industries (she’s on retainer, they said), says.

Steve looks past the camera for a moment, then smiles.

“I would be a hypocrite and a liar if I didn’t say I cried, when I first heard it.” Your throat closes up, watching him on the computer screen. This is dated six months ago. “See, I broke the law, joining the Army. Not just enlisting four times, or enlisting under false pretenses. I enlisted while bisexual, though I didn’t know that term at the time.” The reporters explode, and Steve holds up a hand until they’re quiet. “I don’t doubt I’ll have to repeat myself. For some reason, people don’t think it’s possible to be anything but heterosexual or homosexual. Other people believe that members of the GSRM community didn’t exist before 1970. Attesting from experience, both groups are incorrect.”

Steve, sitting beside you, turns the video off. You turn to him and he shrugs, beet red.

“There’s more, but it’s boring. Something about being in love with my best friend, and then there was a fistfight between Thor and a reporter.”

You turn back to the video and fastforward it to the fistfight, because anything else and you think _you_ , the famous assassin, will start to cry.

“YOU WILL NOT INSULT THE LADY MYSTIQUE IN THAT MANNER,” Thor bellows, and (fortunately, or unfortunately, really) leaps over the table without Mjolnir.

You go back, and the reporter (Everhart, you remember suddenly), asks, “How did you know that you were bisexual?”

“Same way anyone does, I guess. I knew I was attracted to women, but then I fell in love with my best male friend. Also, I was an art student, that particular stereotype is actually based in fact.”

Everyone laughs, who aren’t furiously scribbling.

“You loved me?” you ask, and he takes your hand. You turn to him, trying to figure out why, when you’re this broken thing, he stares at you like that.

“Still do,” he says, leaning in close enough that you’re breathing the same air. “Since 1938, actually.”

“Steve, you know this isn’t gonna fix me, right?” you ask, and he grins.

This time, when he bites your lip, it’s entirely intentional.

 _Oh,_ you think. _That's what this is._

**Author's Note:**

> Shhhhhh, just come.


End file.
